Tag: android
Android hardware profits tanked in 2014
Ina Fried wrote on Re/code about Android hardware profits tanking in 2014. While Android continued to gain market share in the global smartphone market, it saw a significant drop on another key metric: Profits. Analyst Chetan Sharma estimates that global profits in the Android hardware market for 2014 were down by half from the prior…
The myth of device lock-in
John Gruber wrote a very good piece on switching and lock-in to phone systems in response to an article by Joshua Brustein in Businessweek. Brustein: Phone manufacturers make it hard to switch on purpose: They want you locked in forever. That’s the idea behind the Apple Watch and Apple Pay, which don’t work for Android.…
Samsung refuses to pay Android royalties to Microsoft
Android Central reported on Samsung refusing to pay Android royalties to Microsoft because the latter was a direct hardware competitor. We reported a while about Microsoft’s action against Samsung. Samsung is now stating that since Microsoft owns Nokia’s devices unit, sharing sensitive data with the company would result in a breach of US antitrust laws.…
Apple’s new A8X powered iPad Air 2 smokes new Android tablets
ApppleInsider reported on the performance of the iPad Air 2 compared to its competitors. New Geekbench processor benchmarks show Apple’s triple core, 64-bit A8X Application Processor is dramatically faster than the latest Android tablets, despite their additional cores and faster clock rates. Apple is outperforming the competition in the phones segment as well.
Microsoft sues Samsung for $6.9 million
Recode reported on Microsoft’s lawsuit against Samsung’s breach of contract. Microsoft’s lawsuit against Samsung was unsealed on Friday, revealing that the software maker believes it is owed $6.9 million in unpaid interest from last year. Of course, Samsung would not intentionally avoid paying. A lot is at stake in the case, as is made clear…
Android L will have built-in encryption, just like iOS
Digital Trends reported on built-in encryption for Andriod L. The next major version of Android is going to come with one feature that will please the security-conscious: built-in encryption. It means anyone who grabs hold of your mobile device—from petty thief to law enforcement officer—will find it much more difficult to extract data from it.…
Need help moving from Android phone to iPhone?
Apple has provided a detailed guide for people who wish to move from Android phone to iPhone. Why didn’t any other company think of this?
Android Browser flaw a “privacy disaster” for half of Android users
Are Technica reported on Android Browser flaw bring a “privacy disaster” for half of Android users. Baloch initially reported the bug to Google, but the company told him that it couldn’t reproduce the problem and closed his report. Since he wrote his blog post, a Metasploit module has been developed to enable the popular security testing…
Viability of a cheap iPhone
Benedict Evans discussed about how cheap iPhones would fare. The narrative generally splits the market into four rough segments: $50-100 smartphones: currently these are dominated by companies you’ve never heard of using off-the-shelf chips from Mediatek, Spreadtrum and others, and though they run Android and have 3G they often have only 256 meg of RAM,…
New Android ‘Fake ID’ flaw empowers stealthy new class of super-malware
AppleInsider reported on a new Android flaw that allows malware to gain extensive control over a user’s device. This is particularly serious because Google has granted a variety of trusted apps in Android broad permissions; by pretending to be one of these trusted apps, malware can can fool users into thinking that they are installing…